The other thing that hit upon rereading them all (and, at long last, the point of this post) was how many of them I’m still happy with. Like most people who do anything creative, I hate the vast majority of what I write upon rereading, seeing only typos, overused tics, bungled attempts to be more clever than I am, and a dozen other reasons why I should pack it all in and never lay fingers to keys again. And while there’s plenty of that spread over the dozen or so columns I managed, I’m ultimately pleased with how much I managed to get right. With that in mind, and to keep them from disappearing in to the ether like so many other things I’ve written for web sites over the years, I’ve gathered all of Comics Are Expensive here on my blog-thing. Each are timestamped with the day they first went live, as the Dead Milkman did that once with a tour diary from the eighties and I thought it was clever. You can find them by clicking on the Comics Are Expensive tab in the column on the left, or by clicking on the links I’ve handily included below.

1. Teen Titans #55, Avengers: The Initiative #9, Suburban Glamour #3, Captain America #34, Northlanders #3
2. Fantastic Four #554, Tiny Titans #1, Nova Annual #1, Uncanny X-Men #495
3. Umbrella Academy #6, Immortal Iron Fist, Crossing Midnight Vol. 2
4. Rasl #1, Kick Ass #1, Action Philosophers Vol. 3
5. Atomic Robo #4-5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer #12, PS238 #29, Casanova #12
6. Comic Book Comics #1 and Maintenance #9
7. Incredible Hercules #115, Fear Agent #19, The Boy Who Made Silence #1
8. Transhuman #1 and Proof #6
9. Echo #1-2, Resurrection #1-4, Criminal Vol 2. #1-2
10. The Damned: Prodigal Sons #1, Scarlet Traces Vol. 1
11. Invincible Iron Man #1
12. Minx Special
13. Superman Beyond #1

And now, on with the show.

As it turns out, all manner of places. Since around the time of, oh, say, the One Year Later jump following Infinite Crisis, DC have come to realize that maybe it would be a good idea to treat one of the most recognizable and beloved characters of the last century with a bit of care. Placed in the steady hands of Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, and now James Robinson (among others), the last few years have been some of the best of the characters existence. For the first time since I started reading comics, Superman feels fresh and new, an important, vital character worth caring about rather than the stuff-shirted Boy Scout or angsty, occasionally living impaired bore of old. It’s a nice feeling to be excited by the arrival of new Superman comics, as if something has been set right that was wrong for a very long time.

If you haven’t sussed out where this is all going yet, this week’s column – and maybe the next couple of columns, for that matter – is a look at what makes Superman tick. I want to spend some time taking apart three recent titles starring the last son of Krypton, namely Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D, Superman and the Legion of Superheroes, and the final issue of All-Star Superman. While I’m aware that two of those books are from the same writer, I think each manages to explore a different facet of the character that, when combined with the others, helps flush out what it is about him that works so well in spite of all the challenges inherent to his nature. Besides, I think I’ve done a rather good job of restraining my desperate want to gush about Morrison at you, and I deserve a break. So there.

Spoilers, as is their wont, potentially lurk ahead.

FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND 3D
WRITER: Grant Morrison
ARTIST: Doug Mahnke

Of all the great and many things Finalizing and Crisising during DC’s Final Crisis event, one of the more notable aspects of this latest universe-wide rejiggering is how its spin-offs are handled. Using mini-series to fill in certain gaps in the main story or give side characters more time on the stage is a time-honored tradition of epic events in comics, as is the tendency of publishers to field out the job of cranking them out to creators who aren’t nearly up to the task. Not so with Final Crisis – with Greg Rucka on Revelations, Geoff Johns on Legion of Three Worlds and Rogue’s Revenge, and Morrison handling Superman Beyond and the forthcoming Submit in addition to the core book, DC seem to be going to the necessary lengths to ensure each major component of their big event maintains a certain level of quality. While there’s no telling how long the ramifications of this latest bout of Things Never Being The Same will last in the DCU, here’s hoping this idea sticks around for a while.

What makes Superman Beyond stand out from the others, however, is more than just it coming with neat 3D glasses – while the other mini-series tend to wear their purpose on their sleeves (Revelations looks to be about defining Crispus Allen in his new role as the Spectre, Legion is here to provide yet another reboot for the main book and introduce the future to Superboy Prime’s impression of message board trolls, etc.), Beyond is a bit more cagey with its intentions. Is it a chance to bring the Bleed – and with it, the Wildstorm universe – in to the DCU proper? Is it an exploration of the origin of the Monitors? With the sheer level of insanity stirred up in just the first issue, the answer could be any number of things – and really, that’s just fine. With so many of the other minis broadcasting their purpose from the start, Beyond opens with the most traditional scene imaginable – Lois is in trouble, and Superman has to save her – and in so doing lays the groundwork for a story that can go anywhere. Cue adventures.

And lord, what adventures. Boarding a ship looking like the Beatles’ own yellow submarine and setting off through the multiverse with a crew made up of the Supermen of other worlds, I think it’s safe to say this is the last thing anybody expected to come out of Final Crisis. And yet, when you really think about it, it’s right at home. While the main Final Crisis book is Morrison retooling his usual style into a sparser, more layered approach that feels reminiscent of The Wire, Beyond arrives with all the mad, tightly packed joy of his usual work, cramming each page with dozens of little details demanding your attention. Both are shot through the same filter of creeping dread, giving each story the sense that something somewhere just isn’t quite right for our heroes, but here it feels so much more immediate and tangible, like the moment in Alien just before it turned out to be a horror movie all along. When it works, it works wonderfully. The manic, pace, the rapid fire of moments both goofy (“4D vision upgrade”) and beautiful (Superman wrestling the Destroyer through the skies of parallel worlds over the course of four pages), the sheer sense of scale as the Monitor’s ship breaks through the arterial wall of one universe en route to another – it all adds up to create the sort of dazzling and berserk situation that Superman shines in.

After years of being strictly a Marvel reader, it was a friend of mine loaning me a couple of trades of the early part of Morrison’s JLA run that started to pull me in. What won me over the most, beyond even the League having legitimate, world-ending threats to face each arc and Batman beating up Professor Stephen Hawking (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) was his portray of Superman as completely unflappable, a steady presence to inspire those around him no matter what the situation. It’s something Morrison has talked about in at least one or two interviews as the cornerstone of his take on the character: when it’s nearly impossible for you to be killed or hurt in any way, what on Earth would you have to worry about? Here, with the multiverse crumbling around him, his wife a heartbeat away from dying on the other side of existence, and trapped in Limbo with a man in a jester’s costume, that same cool confidence positions him as the perfect counterpoint to the surrounding madness. While he may have started the book at the edge of helplessness over Lois’ condition, all it takes is the suggestion of a solution to put him back in the game. He’s Superman. This is what he does. Reality will just have to kark it some other day.

Of course, it doesn’t always work. The story and 3D fanciness found on about a third of the pages often trip over each other, making a confusing muddle out of the gorgeous Doug Mahnke art, and that just shouldn’t be allowed. This can be especially problematic considering how dense the book is – like much of Morrison’s work, you’ll probably need to read it at least twice to work out even most of what’s going on, something that the cardboard glasses included don’t exactly help with. Between the sheer number of characters involved both new and old and the mad piling up of one event on top of another, Beyond can very quickly overwhelm even the most dedicated reader, causing the book to feel less like a series of beats and more like a drum roll. It’s a shame, really – while not exactly failing at its intended goal, the mash up of sights to see and ideas to wrap your head around presented here never quite gels in the way Morrison is typically known for, leaving a work that, while rewarding for those willing to come along for the ride, will most likely bounce of more casual readers.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that, once all is said and done, Superman Beyond will be considered the weakest of Final Crisis’ minis. In terms of structure and fitting comfortably with the overall tone of the series, they’ll probably be right. Personally, however, I’m just happy it exists, and will happily take its gimmicky glasses and occasionally messy din of a story over a more traditional tale any day, especially when it features Superman casually doing the impossible at the frequency he does here. The DC Universe might be an increasingly dark place to live, and evil may very well have won before the good guys ever got out of bed, but how bad can it be? Superman’s here, and we’re lucky enough to get to watch.

The plan, I think, is for Comics Are Expensive to resume it’s regular schedule of appearing in your tubes for the reading every Friday. And because I don’t think this post has quite enough linkage in it yet, you can check out past installments of the column here.

Apologies for the long absence – summer tends to be completely insane at my day job of making videogames, what with publishers wanting things out the door in time for Christmas, and mine was swallowed whole by work this year. But things have calmed down a bit and I’m back now, filled to bursting with a backlog of large words about comics just desperate for an audience to assault. You lucky devil, you.

For the uninitiated, a quick explanation of what’s going on: Comics Are Expensive is (ostensibly) a weekly column where in I take apart my recent purchases to see if they’re worth my hard-earned dollars. This first installment back is a bit of a cheat, as the books in question aren’t out yet, but as one arrives later this month and the other at the beginning of October, and I plan on buying them both once I’m able, I figure we can let it slide. Both titles are from Minx, DC’s line of graphic novels aimed at teenage girls, which after just over a year of existence is still one of the better ideas anybody in comics has had in a good long while. Next week should see the return of things I’ve already swapped money for, honest.

Potential spoilers ahead. And maybe dragons.

JANES IN LOVE
Writer: Cecil Castellucci
Artist: Jim Rugg

A year and change ago, The Plain Janes was Minx’s opening salvo on comic shops and bookstores. And it was good. Better than good, actually – The Plain Janes managed to push past my inherent cynicism over anything specifically geared towards a younger audience to find and lift up the thin shred of hope I had that DC actually knew what they were doing. It was a fun, mature work, complete with a believable and engaging cast that I wanted to know more about from page one. If there was a problem with the book, it was the lack of a “Volume 1? or something like it on the spine to let readers know that the somewhat abrupt end of the story wasn’t, in fact, the end. Hardly the most annoying thing in the world, and given the books position as the first step of a fledgling comics brand into the wider world, an understandable one. Not much sense in promising a second volume when you don’t know if anybody’s going to buy the first one, yeah?

Happily, The Plain Janes – along with the Minx line overall – appears to be doing rather well for itself. It’s not that surprising, considering author Cecil Castellucci’s background: she’s an award-winning YA author with a reputation for crafting realistic characters and putting them in stories that refuse to talk down to their audience. When it’s reaching the point where I can’t even get my regular dose of Boing-Boing’s Cory Doctrow declaring anything with gears glued to it to be Steampunk without seeing a new article praising her talents, it’s safe to say she’s on to something. The Plain Janes was my first exposure to YA fiction not involving magical British kids in ages, and was a complete breath of fresh air compared to the books I remember being told were “just for me!” at that age. The story of four girls bound together by a common name and the need to somehow express themselves in their safer-than- safe slice of suburbia, it tapped into the teenage need for individuality, that impulse to do something, anything special to fight against the heard in a way that I would have killed for at fifteen. That it was all drawn by Jim Rugg, half of the creative team behind yesterday’s indie darling Street Angel was just icing – lovely, graceful icing full of little detail and moments that made the story just shine.

Janes In Love, the first sequel to The Plain Janes (and of any Minx book, actually) picks up the story nearly a year after our last bittersweet encounter with the Janes, and wastes no time getting back in to it. The regular attacks of public art they pull under the name P.L.A.I.N (People Loving Art In Neighborhoods, ‘natch) are just starting up again after the last one ended in the arrest of Damon, not-so-secret crush of P.LA.I.N. leader Jane Beckles. As before, their actions amuse and impress some in the community and enrage others, most notably Officer Sanchez of the local police. This, year, however, there’s a new force working against P.L.A.I.N’s late night artistry – a Sadie Hawkins-style dance is coming up, and one by one each of the girls become kinda-sorta obsessed with taking just the right boy along. Because boys ruin everything.

As the story progresses, Castellucci delves further in to the realities P.L.A.I.N’s particular style of artistic expression brings with it – namely, art is expensive, and civil disobedience can get you arrested just as fast as its less noble cousins. The answer to both problems comes in the form of an empty lot in just begging to be transformed and the Metro City Museum of Modern Art Contest, where the lucky winner receives a healthy chunk of funding for their proposed art project. It’s a great continuation of the previous volume’s themes, building off the “see, anybody can do this” message of the first one by adding “and here’s a first step you can take towards something bigger”. The result is an important message for readers of any age, showing what regular people can do when committed to an idea while staying mostly grounded in the reality that it won’t be easy. I say “mostly” only because of the climax – while The Plain Janes managed to end on a romantic but real note, the resolution to Janes In Love’s dilemmas feels a bit too neat. It’s a teen movie, “and they all lived happily ever after” ending, and seeing how at its heart this is a teen movie in comic form, that’s good enough. Still, though, it can’t help but nag.

For all its merit, though, the main plot of P.L.A.I.N. trying to realize their goal of reinventing their community through art is merely the backdrop for some fantastic character pieces. Jane’s mother takes the next step from her role of frightened, over protective parent in the first volume to blossom in to a full blown agoraphobic after a friend of hers back in the city is killed in a terrorist attack, becoming a quiet shell that Jane and her father keep trying to breathe life back in to. Sure, trying to reconnect her with the world provides a handy reason for Jane to keep fighting to see her project realized, but its best work is as an elegant reflection on Jane herself, and how she handles herself when reality becomes too much to bear. Elsewhere, trouble brewing amongst the ranks of P.L.A.I.N. provides one of the more realistic looks at life after high school I’ve seen in a good long while as the first signs of the fault lines along which the group of friends will inevitably split make their first appearance. I’m doing my best not to spoil either here, so suffice to say that the first is one of the more empowering scenes I’ve seen in so-called YA fiction, while the other is certainly one of the most bittersweet.

While it doesn’t quite hit as hard as The Plain Janes, Janes In Love still leaves an impression as a more than worthy sequel. Taken as a whole, Castellucci and Rugg’s work practically justifies the existence of the Minx line all on its own. While this latest volume could easily work as the end of the story, it’d be a genuine shame if this were the last comics work we get from the team. There’s always room for more optimism with its feet firmly on the ground, after all.

EMIKO SUPERSTAR
Writer: Mariko Tamaki
Artist: Steve Rolston

Where to start with Emiko Superstar? The back-of-the-book tagline (”Not often, but every once in a while – amazing stuff happens to former geeks”) didn’t exactly inspire confidence, despite the promise of art from Steve Rolston, he who has been scientifically proven to be incapable of doing wrong. I had no idea who Mariko Tamaki is, outside of her short bio proclaiming her to be a writer, performer, and playwright. By now I trusted the people in charge of Minx to recruit writers from outside or on the fringes of comics who knew what they were doing, but still. In a choice between the sequel to a book I really enjoyed and a new effort from an unknown, well, it wasn’t much of a choice.

Happily, I now know exactly who Mariko Tamaki is. She’s somebody who understands.

Emiko Superstar is the story of a high school girl named – wait for it – Emiko, and the long, strange summer bridging the gap between who she was and who she should be. Painfully awkward and more than a little bit boring at the start, Emiko is a failed coffee shop employee turned babysitter doing whatever she can to get through the dead, friendless months between one school year and the next with her head down. All is going according to plan until a chance encounter with Poppy, a regular feature at a Warhol-inspired performance space called The Factory. What starts with a flyer from a girl in face paint and dreadlocks quickly snowballs in to a secret life for Emiko, the sort that, if you’re very careful, eventually takes the place of your boring real one.

It’s a coming-of-age story, obviously. And while the same can be said of much of the Minx line up, Emiko Superstar is easily one of the most touching, realistic, and ultimately important ones around. While DC’s Little Graphic Novel Line That Could has produced all manner of stories I’ve enjoyed, this is the first to hit me square between the eyes with something I could relate to beyond the usual teenage drama. And not just because I am in fact a teenage girl myself, oh no – it’s because if there’s one thing Tamaki understands, it’s the long, grueling process of establishing your own creative voice.

Sometime after being introduced to the Freak Show, the weekly variety night at The Factory, and being bitten by the idea of becoming one of its performers, Emiko discovers the diary of the mom she babysits for. Rather than the bored tale of suburban angst one might expect, the diary is a litany of regrets, a growing hatred of her husband, and longing for the person she’d rather be with. Realizing the potential power of what she’s stumbled on to, Emiko copies as much of it as she can and turns it into fodder for a series of monologues at the Freak Show, becoming an instant hit and ascending to the ranks of its most popular regulars.

It’s a shitty thing to do, taking somebody’s innermost secrets and turning them in to fodder for a performance piece. It’s also one of the most honest portrayals of the first fumbling steps most people take towards creating their own artistic identity. Far too many stories about creative types have their protagonist as either some fount of inspiration and beauty just waiting for the world to notice or as an everyday person just waiting for that special mentor figure to unlock their true potential. This is all well and good for them, but when you’re young and first trying to pick out your own way, there’s nothing more frustrating than reading a book or seeing a movie where unique perspectives worth listening to are handed out as toys with the kid’s meal. The truth tends to go more like this: you start out as a really bad cover band of somebody else’s style, and then star layering other somebody elses on top of that. Eventually, if you’re really lucky, you’re able to cast off the bits that don’t work and pound the ones that do in to something that’s distinctly yours. So yes, Emiko’s actions are selfish and cruel and more than a little heartless, but they’re also not too far from the (sometimes) passable Warren Ellis impression I was doing at eighteen when I decided to get more serious about writing. Either way there’s more than a little theft going on (albeit some more overt than others), and to have a book actually own up to it makes me wish I had a time machine to chuck it in to for the benefit of my past self.

Almost as important is the other lovely examination of one of more critical steps of growing up: discovering your first social scene. The Factory and its owner, the otherwise unnamed Curator, form the center of the counter-culture scene in Emiko’s little town, drawing all sorts of people with different colored hair and interesting bits of metal wedged in their faces. Emiko’s early reaction to it all – that is to say, fleeing in terror – is all too painfully familiar to my own (ahem) first interactions with what passed for scenes in my own small town, and I imagine a lot of people will find themselves wincing sympathetically. Tamaki and Rolston do a fantastic job of capturing the inevitable arc of that first encounter with something so new and different – the early fascination with it all (complete with the initial desperate need to belong), the more-than-human stars everybody else orbits around, and the eventual disillusionment. It’s as neat a dissection of scenes and their gatekeepers as you could hope for, laying out the good and bad with the precision of some one who’s clearly been there. The world of The Factory isn’t all good, and (as with all scenes, inevitably) it’s slowly being torn apart by its own drama. As Emiko Superstar makes clear, however, it’s all worth it for the chance to see what you could be when you grow up.

Mariko Tamaki understands, and has created a story that went from something I wasn’t sure about to one of the best Minx has produced so far. With the perfect partner in the form of Rolston, who packs each page with so much detail and life that you’d swear the characters move if you aren’t watching them closely, they’ve produced an incredibly honest look at what it takes to reinvent yourself that should be required reading for any one remotely interested in pursuing the arts in any way. Please oh please, let them do another.

And that’s it for this week. As always, if there’s anything you think I should check out, feel free to drop a line to chrislamb@gmail.com and let me know all about it. See you next time, yeah?

I managed to get out for under ten dollars, though, so I suppose that’s something. Next week I should be back to picking up new things again, which will satisfy the maddening itch that inevitably takes over the back of my brain every Wednesday. In the meantime, it’s a bit of a short one this week, with just the one book to talk about. I’ll try to be back to my usual level of verbosity next time. Potential spoilers lurk ahead, as usual.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Salvador Larroca

Opening up Invincible Iron Man on the walk through Madison Square Park back to work, a realization hit me: this is the first Iron Man comic I’ve ever bought. Oh, I’ve read plenty of them – friends have tossed me runs of “Demon in a Bottle” and “The Armor Wars” over the years, both of which were great. I’ve just never felt moved to pick up any of the character’s solo stories myself. To be honest, I probably would have left this on the shelf if not for the helpful confluence of a couple of things: enjoying the hell out of the Iron Man movie last week, and Matt Fraction’s name on the cover.

The Iron Man movie succeeded on a number of levels – its cast was excellent, the story was remarkably tight, getting through the obligatory origin and first villain fight with hardly any fat, and the pacing ensured even the quieter bits never slowed things down too much. It was the sort of movie-going experience that left me wanting more the moment the house lights came up, creating a near-desperate need for something as clever and fun as the movie to maintain the happy momentum I was buzzing with all through dinner afterwards and on the way home. I’d never considered myself a big Iron Man fan (at least, not outside the old Avengers arcade game), but for a version of the character more like Downey Jr’s take and less That-Guy-Getting-Deservedly-Punched-In-She-Hulk-This Month, I was wholeheartedly ready to sign up.

Which makes Invincible Iron Man just about the perfect thing to find on the shelves the Wednesday after seeing the movie. The history of comics trying to align themselves with versions of the characters seen in their movies is one of botched attempts and missed opportunities, with companies either hijacking the long-term plans and storylines of their creative teams in the name of potential new readers or going the other way and completely ignoring the chance to appeal to them. Marvel deserve a lot of credit then for hitting upon a solution that works better than any in recent memory – rather than toss out all the continuity of the last few years that has positioned Tony Stark as arguably the most important character in the Marvel Universe, launch a new series that streamlines it all, presenting the character as both superhero and director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and written to feel more like the character so many came out of the theater in love with.

The result is the best take on Tony Stark I’ve seen in years – he’s funny, arrogant (but deservedly so), brilliant to a fault, and so completely convinced that what he’s doing at any given moment is the right thing that it’s hard to doubt him. The weight of what the character has been through in the last few years seems less apparent here, and while it’s just the first issue I can’t help but feel that it won’t be showing up any time soon. It’s part of why Invincible Iron Man is such a good idea – if you want to see Stark continue to wrestle with the aftermath of the Civil War or fight Skrulls or whatever, there’s the other on-going Iron Man title (and much of the rest of Marvel’s output, frankly). Invincible Iron Man looks to be (and with any luck, will turn out to be) an event-free zone. It’s the solo adventures of Iron Man doing what he does best – finding problems and applying his big brain to solving them.

The first problem of the series appears in the form of Ezekiel Stane, son of the late Obidiah and genius mass-murdering psycho. Whatever his plan is, it’s clear he’s been working on it for a while – Ezekiel’s body has been modified to take advantage of its excess energy in rather nasty ways, and he’s been creating human bombs out of what looks all too much like Iron Man tech. He’s clearly being positioned as a younger, faster counter to Stark’s entrenched ways of doing things, and the inevitable confrontation is all but guaranteed to end in a mess. Ezekiel is a smart choice for an opening villain, tying not only into the villain from the movie but also echoing the theme of the son overcoming the father from both the comics and the screen. You’re an old-school Iron Man fan? Great, here’s something for you. Your only exposure to the character is two hours in a dark room with Robert Downey, Jr? Then hey, here’s something for you, too.

As mentioned earlier, Matt Fraction’s involvement was another draw for picking up the book, and he doesn’t disappoint. Fraction’s grasp of the characters is immediate and extremely satisfying, from the back and forth between Tony and Pepper in the elevator to Tony’s inability to stop thinking of new things to add to the suit even when being shot at and beyond. I can’t say how much of it rings true with the how the characters have been written recently, but honestly, I don’t really care. It’s smart, it’s believable, and most importantly, it’s exactly what I wanted. While Larroca’s art varies from beautiful in places to a bit muddy in others, it’s nice to see him producing work again that’s not photo-referenced to the point of distraction. Between the two of them, this arc stands to be something truly lovely, and I really can’t wait to see it continue.

Perhaps most important of all, though, is this is the first Marvel comic in a while that I’ve immediately wanted to start pushing on people. While no movie is going to send a million people into the shops like Burton’s first Batman did, Marvel’s approach to creating a friendly point of entry here has produced a book that can be handed off to pretty much anybody without an afternoon spent explaining why the character here isn’t like what they saw on the screen. And maybe that’s the way to hook those interested in more of the character but put off by the years and years of continuity: put out a version of the character that can be easily passed from comics readers to their uninitiated friends that’s both easy to get in to and doesn’t throw the current status quo into utter disarray. If Invincible Iron Man can continue with the same strength and grace it’s opening with, then comics may have found the recipe for the perfect gateway drug.

BUY STATUS: Very much in for the foreseeable future. I was still a bit bummed over Brubaker and Fraction leaving Iron Fist, but this could very well take its place as my favorite Marvel book.

And that’s it for this week. Again, apologies for the extremely short installment, and for the every-other-week nature of the column recently – the day job making videogames is taking up more and more of my time and energy as things get busier, so I’m afraid it might be the norm for a while. Thanks for your patience with me, and with any luck things should eventually return to normal. In the meantime, if there’s anything I should be reading or talking about, drop a suggestion in the comments thread or via email to chrislamb@gmail.com. See you next time.

I know, okay? I know. Before the con, and even up to standing in the corral waiting for the doors to open Saturday, it sounded like a great idea. The (ha ha) thinking behind this was something like Hey, I live in New York, where there is a fairly healthy number of comic shops. Instead of blowing my comics budget for the next several weeks on things I can probably get another time, why not pick up stuff I can’t get anywhere else? Like original art for the apartment, Chaotic starter sets (it’sforworkiswear), and funnel cake? A bit optimistic, sure, but as goals go not necessarily a bad one.

You can probably see where this is going. Within minutes of the doors opening I’d already picked up two books from Tokypop and was eyeing the Dark Horse tables for more than their giant yellow bags. While there were panels to keep me away from all the shiny things on Saturday, all bets were off Sunday, with the show floor swallowing me up and spitting me out with a bag full of treasure and a considerably lighter wallet. It’s hard to be disappointed in myself – really, could it have ended any other way?

So the bad news is that, between the art and books and everything, I can’t really afford new comics for the next couple of weeks or so. The good news, however, is that I have enough new things to easily fill the gap between now and then. It helps a little to think this was my master plan all along, but self-deluding only goes so far with bank statements.

Potential spoilers ahead, as always. Here there be plot points.

THE DAMNED #1
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Brian Hurtt

When the first limited series of The Damned appeared on my radar last year, it wasn’t until the very end – I started reading one issue before the end, which was helpful in terms of not having to deal with the monthly wait between installments but a little disappointing in that there wasn’t going to be a regular flow of it. It was the sort of book that grabbed me immediately, blending a number of my favorite things – noir, stories that drop you into the middle of things, the supernatural, and the nagging feeling of reading a Tom Waits song – into a nicely twisting story backed by some very lovely artwork. By the time I’d put down the first issue, I was already putting together a mental list of people who very much needed to read it.

For those of you other there who haven’t had the book forcibly shoved on them by me, the short version: The Damned is the story of Eddie, a guy floating somewhere between “two-bit hood” and “lowlife” with an interesting twist – he can’t stay dead. Oh, he can die easily enough, and does so on a regular basis, but all it takes is something alive touching him to bring him back (at the cost of whoever did the touching, naturally). Eddie’s world is a nasty one, made up of a nameless town during the prohibition era where the underworld isn’t just a fancy word for the criminal element. Demons live amongst us, controlling organized crime and never letting the cowering populous forget who’s boss. Over the course of the original series, Eddie found himself stuck between a rock and a number of hard places, including a war between demon gangs, the strange gray place he visits every time he dies, and an ultimate power play that would have seen the demons replaced with something possibly worse. When last we saw him, he was running a club under one of the most powerful families around and looking to finally enjoy life a little.

Not that any of it was meant to last, of course. Before catching up with how Eddie’s been, though, the new issue first flashbacks to introduce us to his family, hinting at a much happier time of his life and the dark dealings between his father and a particularly nasty bunch of demons. It’s a nice moment, setting up not only an issue dealing more with Eddie’s estranged brother than Eddie himself but establishing that the whole thing with the demons running things behind the scenes has gone on for a good long while. It’s a simple but effective scene, building nicely on top of what we saw of how the world works in the first series. Only in a world abandoned by god and given over to the monsters could a guy like Eddie be the hero, and this briefest of looks at what he grew up with provides just enough fodder for your imagination to have you sympathizing with him by the end.

The rest of the book deals with Eddie reconnecting with his aforementioned brother Morgan as part of a frankly insane plan involving what might be the current location of their dead mother’s soul. There’s some serious history between the two (which will no doubt be delved deeper into over the next two issues), including a connection between the curse keeping Eddie alive and the strange tattoos covering most of Morgan’s skin. Perhaps even better than the requisite weirdness, though, is how well their scenes are written – Bunn establishes their relationship so quickly and firmly that everything past the first few panels of their meeting in a bar is just gravy. Their troubled relationship might not offer anything that hasn’t been seen before, but the skill with which its fleshed out packs more grace and subtlety than I’ve seen a comic manage for quite some time. It also provides a welcome change in perspective on the ordinarily cool and collected Eddie, which is always fun.

While any one who read the original series will feel right at home, things may be a bit rougher on new readers. With only three issues for the story there’s not a lot of time for playing catch up, and the weight of some scenes will most likely be lost without the context of the original series. That said, the broad strokes of what got us here are present throughout the issue, providing just enough detail to fill in new readers (and whet their appetites for the convenient trade of the original series, a mere $14.95 from Oni) without ruining the good bits, of which there are plenty. The Damned was a fantastic work, creating a world both eerily familiar and strangely horrifying at the same time. While it might only be three issues, “Prodigal Sons” appears to be picking up where it left off without missing a beat.

BUY STATUS: In for the duration, and secretly hoping this shortened series means we’ll be getting another one before the year’s out. The Damned is pure fun through and through.

SCARLET TRACES VOL. 1
Writer: Ian Edginton
Artist: D’Israeli

Scarlet Traces is the sort of thing that makes me wonder if I have some sort of deep-rooted psychological trouble that’s caused me to blank out at any time during the last few years, as it’s the only real way to explain how I haven’t heard of it before seeing it at the Dark Horse booth. An unofficial sequel to War of the Worlds, dealing not only with what England did with all the Martian technology lying around at the end of the invasion but her plans for an offensive against the red planet? Clearly some sort of Durden-esque double life is the only way to explain how I could have missed a book so clearly written just for me. I suppose spending my lost time looking like Brad Pitt and sleeping with Helen Bonham Carter makes up for it, though. Maybe.

As touched on above, Scarlet Traces takes place in a post-Martian invasion England, a land transformed by the salvaged technology of the would-be conquerors into a steampunk (minus the steam) slice of the future where cars walk on insect legs, homes are warmed by modified versions of the deadly heat ray, and the country has isolated itself from the rest of the world, resentful over their lack of help during the war and hording all the treasure for themselves. It’s a cold place, for all its advancements, feeling very much like a child pretending to be an adult. While London rejoices in her Martian makeover, one doesn’t have to look too far to see the bad that came along with the good of the country’s great leap forward. More and more factories in the rural areas are becoming automated, with families so desperate for work that anything – including an ad looking for young women to work as housemaids in the big city – is worth jumping on if it means putting food on the table.

The central mystery of the book is built around one such want ad, pulling war veterans Robert Autumn and Archie Currie out of semi-retirement in the name of tracking down Currie’s seemingly missing niece. The plot naturally thickens along the way, with the trail to the lost girl becoming littered with buildings blown up to hide evidence, thugs packing pocket heat rays, and a homeless Sergeant finding and his pet dog finding emaciated bodies along the muddy banks of the Thames. All of this leads somewhat inevitably to a larger conspiracy, and while its revelation towards the end isn’t exactly a surprise, the scope and potential of the plan make it more than worth the wait.

Which is both a good and bad thing. In building up to the story’s turning point, Edginton and D’Israeli seem almost restless with their more mundane detective story, eager to just get through it and finally embrace the more fantastic elements. It doesn’t hurt things too much – the larger story of Autumn and Currie getting closer and closer to the madness lurking behind England’s brave new world is still a good read, but compared to the twists and turns things take from the start of chapter four on it can’t help but come off lacking. It’s a slow boil beginning that’s just ever so slightly off to such a minor degree that you might not even notice till you’ve finished the entire thing. Not a huge thing, but as I’m running out of ways to say “it’s really, really good” I thought I might gripe a bit to inflate my word count.

And it is really, really good. D’Israelli’s art is completely on throughout, creating machines and buildings both incredible to look at and slightly horrifying to consider. Edginton’s script drives home at every turn how little people have changed despite their wonderful new toys, creating a cast of characters ranging from tragically noble to the sort of disgusting that only comes with being sure you’re doing the right thing. Scarlet Traces is a thrill to read, a genuine new world built on the remains of the old and just the sort of thing comics were built for. For all the comics I read, few of them manage to stay with me after the fact. Yet even now, days after gobbling it up after getting home from NYCC, I keep getting distracted imagining the clatter of a traffic jam made of six-legged cars on cobblestone streets. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

BUY STATUS: Sorely tempted to throw sense to the wind (yet again) and grab the second volume immediately, but remaining strong. First thing on the list once I’m back in a cash-having way, though.

So far, so good. Next week will see more Con purchases, and maybe the week after that, but don’t let that stop you from recommending anything coming out in the meantime via the comments or an email to chrislamb@gmail.com. I’ll be keeping a list of what I’m missing at the shops for when I can pick things up again, and may even be checking it twice. See you then.

- Michael Hogan, him what plays Colonel Tigh on Battlestar Galactica, referring to Edward James Olmos as “Eddie” throughout a sort of good, sort of not so good panel full of horrible fans and an idiot moderator.

- The incredible Venture Bros. panel, which involved a preview of the new season and a mention of the game I designed for the show that was killed when Adult Swim made the jump from show-based games to original ones.

- Regularly running into friends and adding them to our party. To survive Comic Con, you need a posse.

- POCKET NINJA.

- Being introduced to Chaotic, a newish and intriguing new card game from 4Kids that is apparently quietly taking the world by storm. Between this and what I’ve heard about the new World of Warcraft CCG, it looks like card games are having a rush of new blood in much the same style as videogames – the people working on these things are the same kids that grew up playing Magic: The Gathering, and the designs of both Chaos and WoW contain reactions against the less popular aspects of the seminal card game. Chaos is faster, for instance, throwing the player into the the thick of things from the word go, while WoW is highly tuned to stave off the horrors of mana burn and other nagging problems WoTC can’t seem to iron out of their game. It’ll be interesting to see this trend continue.

- Doing the business card swap with a bunch of people behind Chaotic, and getting loads of booster packs for free. A mutual beneficial deal to be sure, as the next day I went back and bought two starter sets. I am doomed.

- POCKET NINJA.

- Picking up a fantastic page of original High Moon art from Steve Ellis (it’s page 33), as well as sketches from Kyle and Lily Baker. Also a couple of truly ace robots from artist
Jason May. Our walls are better than your walls.

- Filling up on enough Comics Are Expensive fodder to last me a few weeks at least.

- Filling my bag with enough miniature wine bottles to last me an hour or two at least.

- Realizing I didn’t really care about and of Marvel or DC’s events or booths, and instead throwing all my money for new books at at Dark Horse, Tokyo Pop, and Comics Bakery. Comics Bakery even gave me a squid pin. Pay attention, Big Two: The way to my heart is tentacled and lurks in the deep.

So a good show all around, and I’m very much looking forward to next year. There’s something that makes me very happy about people being able to freely enjoy the things they love, and while there’s inevitably a fat guy running an X-Wing guy down demanding “A PHOTO WITH A PILOT OF THE REPUBLIC!”, it’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t mind tapping into again. We didn’t make it to any of the videogame panels, including the one with my boss sparking a feeding frenzy by mentioning we’re hiring, but there’s always next time. Oh, how there is always next time.

The four or five of you counting as regular readers of the site may have noticed that posting as whole has dropped significantly lately. It’s an unfortunate side effect of work gobbling up every moment of free time lately, and while it shows no signs of letting up till sometime near the end of summer, I’m going to try to get back to a roughly regular schedule of adding blather to the internet. Probably not till next week, though – this weekend is the New York Comic Con, and I’ve decided to smash my brains against it over the course of Saturday and Sunday. Their failure to specifically say on the official site that bottles and such aren’t allowed can only lead to trouble. Delicious, gin lemonade-y trouble.

Regular service somewhat returning next week, assuming I’m not carried off by a battalion of Hello Kitty Stormtroopers.